


the trouble with wanting is

by captainkilly



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, M/M, Nixon Week, Smut, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, with a small helping of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:50:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26940166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: Lewis Nixon's third jump very nearly kills him.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Ronald Speirs
Comments: 22
Kudos: 50





	the trouble with wanting is

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I certainly didn't expect to end up _here_. This fic was entirely born of the very few canon interactions we have between these two and my own thoughts about their potential to connect/level with one another. It's also my second-ever attempt at writing something smutty, which honestly makes me want to set this fic down and hibernate for the foreseeable future.

* * *

He can’t stop his fingers from trembling. Curses as the letters blur together on the page and create a blot of ink that’s entirely at odds with the neat penmanship he needs to attempt tonight. He tears the paper in half decisively. _I am sorry to report.._

“Fuck you,” he tells the stack of paper still in front of him. _Your son was killed.._ “Fuck you.” _..when our plane exploded and hell claimed all of us.._ “Fuck you.”

Lewis Nixon is exhausted. He’s been wide awake for longer than a day. Is going to be wide awake for much longer than that, if the way he’s already mentally climbing the walls right now is anything to go by. His hands shake as he pushes himself away from the small writing desk. He’d kill for a drink. He’d kill for any kind of alcohol. He’d kill for one drop of it.

“Fuck,” he says again, and buries his head in his hands.

He isn’t sure how long he sits there and just stares at the crumpled, torn-up papers that already litter the floor. Isn’t sure when he broke one of his pens clean in half, either, and supposes it’s a good thing he went and bought a few more half a lifetime ago. He can always get more. Life philosophy of Lewis Nixon right there. Life philosophy of the entire goddamn Nixon clan. He scoffs at the thought. That philosophy of always getting more didn’t work out too well with the alcohol. This part of Germany’s too dry and too stick-up-its-ass to care about the fact that he ran out and can’t get more.

He _hates_ this part of Germany. He hates this side of the war, in which they’re rolling from one town to the next and conquering nothing but pieces of rubble. He hates everything about today, from the second he woke up until this moment when everything feels like it broke beyond repair.

He’s good at breaking things. Not so good at putting anything back together again.

Lewis picks up the glass of water. Contemplates it. Gulps down the liquid and wrinkles his nose. Sneers down at the glass. Throws it against the wall at the far end and watches the shards explode out into the air before they coat the floor in specks of light. He picks up the glass bauble that stoppers the decanter. Chucks it at the nearest wall and watches it splinter. Something inside him breaks, too. Snaps clean in half. He keeps breaking.

A sharp, insistent knock at the door hauls him out of the act of digging his nails further and further into his flesh.

Lewis kicks his chair back and saunters toward the door on bare feet. If he steps on a shard at all, he doesn’t feel a damn thing. He’s unarmed. He thinks if the Germans really did make it as far as his doorstep, they probably wouldn’t go through the damn trouble of knocking.

It’s this thought that makes him open the door wide in a way that leaves him entirely vulnerable.

“Christ, Nixon,” greets the man on the other side of the door, “do basic safety measures mean anything to you?”

“Not lately.” Exhaustion and annoyance do battle and win out in honesty. “Does leaving me the hell alone mean anything to you?”

Ron Speirs merely raises an eyebrow at the hostility. The man shrugs in answer a moment later, as if he has deliberated a reply and decided that any words would not convey his supreme indifference better than that shrug. Lewis sneers at the sight. Almost closes the door again.

Almost.

“Where did you get that?” he asks, gaze finally having dropped away from the man’s hard stare to find one of the man’s hands locked around the neck of a bottle. A familiar, far too familiar bottle. “Speirs, I swear, if you looted the town clean of this before I showed up..”

“Not the town.” There’s a smug smirk at play around Speirs’s lips that Lewis would love to wrench away from the man’s mouth by force. “Imagine my surprise when Dick’s footlocker took a tumble four days ago, as another victim of some of Easy’s legendary clumsiness, and out rolled.. this. Now, I don’t know about you, Nixon, but I didn’t consider Dick to be the one to drink this kind of swill.”

“So, what, you stole it?”

“Liberated it.” The man’s smile is toothy. His eyes cold. “Finders keepers, and all that.”

“Fuck you,” breathes Lewis. He rams his fist against the side of the door, because even he recognizes that striking Ron Speirs clean in the face is a tale he won’t live to tell. “That wasn’t yours to take.”

Speirs blinks. Lewis still isn’t sure how the man manages it, but his eyes warm in an instant and the almost-confused tilt of his head isn’t practiced at all. There’s something lost and awkward in his gaze, truth be told, something that makes Lewis shift his weight from foot to foot and makes it almost impossible to meet Speirs’s eyes.

“I’m returning it, aren’t I?” the man asks, then, and he holds the bottle aloft. VAT 69, sure enough. Lewis’s bottle, sure enough. “Why else would I darken your doorstep at this hour?”

“Who knows why the fuck you do things,” mutters Lewis in response.

“I do.” Speirs’s smile is slow this time. Deliberate. Damn near predatory. “I always know what I’m doing.”

“Lucky you.” Lewis glares back to the best of his ability. Isn’t surprised when it does nothing to dissipate that smile. “I’ll take that bottle back now, thank you.”

“And be useless to me in the morning when I need an intelligence officer to help me make sense of whatever convoluted bullshit the Krauts have dreamed up this time?” Speirs’s eyebrows almost vanish into his hairline. His words are cutting in a way that makes Lewis feel as though he’s standing on nothing but shards of glass. “I don’t fucking think so. You’re not drinking this one alone.”

“What are you gonna do, join me?” scoffs Lewis. “The fun drunk is two doors down, listens to the name Harry Welsh. Don’t bother asking Dick, because he wouldn’t know a good time if it hit him in the face right now.” Fury and spite coat his tongue and make him careless “Me, I’m the one who can’t get fucking drunk anymore. I’m the one that’s a goddamn mess.”

“If I wanted to have _fun_ ,” says Speirs, in the tone of a man who doesn’t believe in such a thing, “I would go downstairs and watch my company make a total fool of itself.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“Here I am.”

Speirs steps closer. Lewis steps back. Another step forward. Another step back. It’s the most insane dance he has ever engaged in. He knows the man well, having worked intelligence with him before, but there’s a light in his eyes he doesn’t care to identify. They’ve never been close, not really, nothing like this dance of feet would suggest, but Lewis likes the way Speirs never once tells him he’s crazy for any of the insights he shares. Harry looks at him the wrong way when he comes up with something too cutting while Dick outright questions him every time, but Speirs just takes things in stride and tries to fit in even the most harebrained ideas.

“Come in, then,” he says in defeat, and steps to the side. “Welcome to the crisis.”

Speirs’s face remains impassive as he steps forward across the threshold. He surveys the room with a rather blank look on his face. Doesn’t even raise an eyebrow when his eyes land on the splinters of glass and the shredded papers that litter the floor.

Lewis knows better than to assume he is not being judged, but the lack of verbal offense makes his shoulders relax and lets him lock the door behind Speirs without too much difficulty.

“I heard about your jump,” says Speirs after a moment’s pause.

“You and everyone else.” Lewis snorts. “Are you here to _congratulate_ me?”

“No. Here to listen.”

Speirs’s boots squash the glass further. He kicks one of the offending papers out of the way. He seats himself at the foot of the bed and leans back as if it belongs to him. He holds the bottle out lazily.

Lewis attempts to ignore the squirming feeling in his stomach. He almost flinches away from the warmth of Speirs’s fingers when he brushes past them to claim the bottle. He grabs the chair and sinks down onto it unceremoniously. Pours the liquor into the only two glasses he hasn’t smashed to pieces yet.

“To my continued survival,” he says sourly, passing a glass to Speirs and raising his own in salute. “Long may I be miserable.”

“To your survival,” murmurs Speirs, “and to all who lost their lives because that jump was a clusterfuck.”

Lewis blinks in surprise. He didn’t expect to hear confirmation of what he suspected about that jump. It was ill-timed, ill-done, with a new plane that nobody trusted and a drop zone that never felt safe to begin with. The little intelligence he’d succeeded at scraping together didn’t outweigh the risk to this many men, either.

“Small-scale Market Garden,” agrees Lewis out loud. He tips his drink back. Immediately pours another. “I hate everything about it.”

“Do you ever feel like the longer we’re at war, the less sense our orders start to make?” The glower Speirs sends at his drink before tipping it back in one go is truly impressive. He holds out his glass for another, too. “The trivialities of it. The intelligence that is never used once acquired. I have two patrols planned for tomorrow and neither one makes sense to me.”

“I’ll go over any notes you have. Sort it out. Keep your casualties down.”

“Thank you.”

They work well like this. Do what needs doing, write notes in a half-language even Dick doesn’t comprehend, and talk things through only sparingly. They’re not drinking buddies, never have been. Lewis is used to Speirs’s eyes trailing after him. Has grown almost accustomed to his presence being a perpetual shadow at his back. Even in the midst of Normandy’s chaos, they’d merely nodded at one another over the body of a dead German and understood the other’s role.

Speirs has always been able to see right through him.

“Here.”

Lewis blinks as Speirs tosses a folded-up piece of paper onto his desk. There is neat, orderly handwriting on its outside already. If he squints at it, which he does, he receives nothing but fragments. _Combat.. your loss.. brave.. out on a mission.._

“What’s this?”

“I use it to write these letters with. That’s what you’re doing, right?” Speirs’s gaze travels down toward the papers on the ground. He amends his words. “Or trying to do. The letters home, to the families of the men that were killed this morning.”

“What of them?”

Speirs nods at the piece of paper on the desk. “That’s my list of platitudes. I combine them differently every time. If I actually knew the man, I’ll add an anecdote or story that stuck with me.” He shrugs. Ducks his head. “It’s a lot of emotional work, you know? Having a list helps.”

“And you’re giving it to me?”

“I’d write the letters for you if I thought you would let me. This? Next best thing.”

“Why wouldn’t I let you?”

Speirs’s eyes are hard. “Because I know you, Nixon. Well enough to know that you feel some kind of fucked-up responsibility for these men you never encountered before your jump into hell this morning.” He shrugs. “You can write the damn things in the morning. Give me the list back later.”

Lewis observes Speirs as he pours them another glass. Narrows his eyes.

“There’s no game.” Speirs holds up both hands in surrender. “I don’t think they should’ve sent you on that jump.”

“They sent me on that jump. Knowing it was in broad daylight. Knowing there was a chance they were going to see us all burn. Dick signed off on sending me. Said it’d be good for me to get away from battalion a bit.”

That’s the part that stings most. The part that drove the knife home and killed him anyway.

Speirs’s blink is slow. “Everyone has their orders.” His face remains unreadable. “None of it is personal. You know this.”

He very nearly scoffs. Nearly lays it all out on the table.

_I’m not wanted. I’m just one more problem to fix._

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m sick of that impersonal bullshit.” He almost snarls the words out. “Maybe I just want someone to be nice to me.”

“If you wanted someone to be nice to you,” snorts Speirs, “you’d be three doors down getting _comforted_ by Dick.” There’s an edge to his words that Lewis can’t quite identify. “Instead, you’re sitting here and tearing yourself apart. Drinking with me, a new low no doubt, as you attempt to forget all the blood that clings to your hands. How’s that working out for you, Nixon?”

“I never fired a gun while in combat. Never killed a man that way.” He breezes through the confession and is surprised to find that Speirs doesn’t so much as blink. “I’d say it’s working out fine.”

“Bullshit.” Speirs’s voice is so low that Lewis has to strain to make out the words. He leans closer to the man in a bid to make out the furious, soft hiss that streams forth from those lips. “You’ve never fired a gun in combat, or murdered a man in cold blood the way so many of us have. That’s not your job. You’ve killed more than most of us, though.” Speirs’s head lifts, and his gaze is scorching and relentless all at once. Lewis can’t look away. Wishes he could. “A few well-placed words in the right ears.. Some manipulation to get your way.. Enemy intelligence wielded by someone who’s got a formidable intellect in his own right.. Yes, Nixon, I would say you’ve got just as much blood on your hands as I do.”

Lewis swallows. The whiskey burns down his throat. He’s dismayed to find the glass empty. Reaches for the bottle anew. He can’t deal with Speirs when he’s still mostly sober. He can’t deal with the way he _feels_ under the man’s gaze now. He’s stripped naked with nothing to defend with or hide behind.

He frowns when Speirs’s hand clamps down around his wrist before he can reach the bottle. There’s nothing light about this touch. Nothing friendly, either, because Speirs’s fingers tighten enough to leave bruises.

“You’ve had enough,” the man says, and just like that the bottle is deftly moved out of reach. “You can’t keep drowning yourself out like this.”

“What the fuck do you even care?”

“We’re in a goddamn war zone. If you fall off the wagon, the company falls with you. If you want to wallow in whatever the fuck your issues are, you need to run straight back home and be the family disappointment until you get your fucking head out of your ass.” The grip on his wrist tightens to the point of pain. Speirs’s eyes are stormy. Daring. “We’re at _war_ , Nixon. I will do whatever the hell it takes to win this thing. There used to be a time you felt the same.”

“I still fucking do,” snarls Lewis, attempting to break Speirs’s hold on him but only succeeding in kicking the man’s shins, “and fuck you for suggesting otherwise. There isn’t a goddamn wagon left for me to hurl myself off of!” He blinks away the blurry vision that threatens to overtake him. The last thing he needs is to cry in front of _Speirs_. “I almost fucking died this morning and all anyone’s managed to say to me is ‘oh congratulations on your third star to go with those jump wings’. I fucked up at regiment enough to get demoted, thankfully, because if I interrogate one more German on my own I’m going to tear them apart really slowly, and I don’t feel bad about any of it and I wish I fucking did!”

“Do you really?”

“I.. I..”

“It’s me, Lewis,” says Speirs, then, and the choice of his first name makes Lewis shudder. “I’m not Dick, who sees parts of you without seeing all of you.” There’s condemnation in that. There’s an accuracy in it that almost stings. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”

“I’m not,” he whispers.

“I know.”

“Give me the damn drink, Ron.”

Speirs’s boot connects with the bottle. Sends it tumbling across the floor. Spills the liquid onto the floorboards, the rug, the shards of glass. Speirs’s grip on his wrist becomes as heavy as iron shackles. He clasps Lewis’s other wrist before Lewis’s ill-timed punch connects with the side of his face.

Lewis gapes at him.

“No.”

Speirs’s refusal makes him see red.

“Get the fuck out,” snarls Lewis. He kicks out at the man reflexively. Rises to his feet and puts his face so close to Speirs’s that he could feasibly tear the man’s features apart with his teeth. He’s got half a mind to do just that. “Get _out_ of my room, get the _fuck_ out of my face, get your goddamn hands _off_ of me.”

Speirs rises to his feet then, too, and almost sends him stumbling back against the desk. There’s something dark in his gaze now. Glass crunches underfoot as the man closes the space between them until he’s bodily pressed against Lewis. The pressure on his wrists doesn’t dissipate, not even when Lewis aims a harder kick at the man’s shins that almost succeeds in drawing out a wince. Lewis knows he can’t win a fight from a man who’s forgotten more ways to kill than Lewis has ever learned, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t try.

“For someone who hates being alive,” murmurs Speirs, voice as liquid and languid as the memory of the whiskey sliding down his throat, “you’re sure as hell fighting enough to stay that way.”

“I hate you,” says Lewis. Petulance, bitterness, and rage collapses into every word before defeat sets into his shoulders. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“You’re in no state to be alone.”

“Stop trying to keep me alive!”

“Stop all your stupid attempts to die,” counters Speirs. He really does press Lewis against the desk this time. Pins down his wrists atop it and sends another paper scattering to the floor. The wood digs into the small of Lewis’s back. The dull, sharp ache of it is nothing compared to the weight that settles in his stomach. “It’s beneath you, Lewis, it truly is. So, no, I’m not going to leave. I don’t think you want me to.”

“I do.”

“Do you?” The tilt of Speirs’s head is curious. His gaze is open. Inviting, even. His grip on Lewis’s wrists vanishes. “Go on then. Kick me out.”

Lewis pushes against the man’s chest until he’s free of the desk. Until he’s almost tripping over the offending bottle that now lies empty on the floor. Until he’s backing Speirs up against the foot of the bed and bitterly regretting all of his life choices. His hands grab the man’s uniform tightly. So tight he almost tears a button off, so tight he almost sends the captain’s marker skidding across the floor, so tight he almost rips the fabric beneath his touch.

There’s nothing gentle about this. There doesn’t have to be.

“Lew–”

He’s not sure what possesses him. He’s not sure why this feels like the only option he’s got left. All he knows is he’s done talking, he’s done fighting, he’s done feeling like the whole world’s going to collapse around him. All he knows is that the logical option is to drown whatever the hell Speirs has to say out by kissing him.

He’s kissing Ron Speirs in the middle of a goddamn war zone and it’s not even the strangest thing that has happened to him all day.

Speirs’s lips are soft, pliable beneath his mouth, inviting in the way the taste of whiskey still lingers upon them. He runs his tongue over the man’s lower lip as if he can still pick up more than taste alone, as if some droplets of liquor still linger, as if he can get drunk off the way those lips feel against his own. Lewis licks and coaxes his way into that mouth, knowing full well he’s in chase of a high that the other man is deliberately keeping from him.

He isn’t surprised when Speirs inhales, grasps his hips as if he needs something real to cling to, and kisses back with the same hunger he reserves for everything else in life. Oh, but he _hates_ this, he _hates_ how he gasps against the sensation of lips meeting lips, _hates_ how he moans when their tongues meet, _hates_ how unraveled his breaths sound when Speirs’s hand winds into his hair and tugs his head back. He hates how he yields and offers his throat to the man’s lips, tongue, and teeth so freely.

Lewis snarls. Pushes back with all that remains of his strength. As with everything else in life, he doesn’t successfully think it through first.

The tumble onto the bed is rough. He collapses on top of Speirs, who grunts out a special kind of indignation at being pinned down like this and grabs hold of Lewis rather decisively. Before Lewis can good and well react, before he has any idea what’s happening, Speirs’s arms wrap around him and send him flying until his back meets the mattress and Speirs’s weight lands atop him.

“Really?” he asks. Arches his brow and peers up at the man, who’s looking entirely too pleased with this turn of events. “You can’t give up control for five seconds?”

“You can always tell me ‘no’. I’ll back off. Might even leave, if you ask nicely.” The grin that meets him is rather wolfish, but the light in his eyes is not yet feverish enough to be a concern. His voice drops down to a purr. “You’re still in control, Lewis.”

“Am I?”

Speirs huffs out a noise between breath and laughter. Lewis thinks the smile he spots is genuine, even when it’s gone in a flash, before those lips meet his again and he forgets all else. Speirs’s arms bracket his body, but his hands don’t wander. It’s their legs that entangle, now. Heat pools in Lewis’s belly, uncoils and rears a lazy head from slumber, thrills through his body when the man’s hips press up against his unreservedly. There’s _want_ there already, unmistakably, and the very fact that this man wants _him_ sends shivers up Lewis’s spine.

“Ron,” he breathes, finally letting the man’s name spill from his lips like liquor out the bottle, “Ron, _stop_.”

The connection is broken immediately as Ron sits up and blinks slowly at him. His hands clasp in his lap as his weight vanishes and the air wedges itself between them once more. He makes no move toward Lewis. Just studies him, eyes warmer than usual, faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and never moves a muscle.

“You know I’m testing you, yeah?” checks Lewis, just to be sure.

“I know. Did I pass?”

“Flying colors,” grins Lewis, and then he’s reaching up and pulling Ron down atop him before he can think twice about it. He smiles even more when Ron’s hair brushes his forehead and their noses touch before their mouths do. His belly burns with desire for a drink, for the spilled bottle on the floor, for the glass that cuts and the violence in the hands that now interlock with his. “I still hate you, though.”

“I know,” hums Ron, “and that’s okay.”

“How in the hell is that okay?”

Ron presses a short, searing kiss to his jaw. “I’ve realized that I don’t give a fuck about your reasons or your feelings, Lewis. I don’t care what the hell this is.” The smile turns hungry and just a little vicious. “I just selfishly want a taste of you. Take you all the way down my throat.”

“Then have me,” he murmurs against that smile. His belly swoops at the thought. He hardens more at the idea of being tasted, being taken in like this, being ravaged by the same hunger with which Ron’s body presses up against him. Lewis smiles in the face of danger the same way he always has. Challenges as brazenly as he dares. “Claim me.”

Ron has never been the one to back down from a challenge once issued. This time really is no different, but there’s a fervor to his movements that whisks Lewis’s breath away from his lungs. His hands remain gentle, though the same cannot be said for his mouth. His mouth is the culprit that makes Lewis bend and move to every touch with every scrape of teeth and every carefully timed flick of Ron’s tongue against his skin. His mouth on Lewis’s neck, with his fingers unbuttoning that collar and slipping beneath his uniform to wander across bare skin, is enough to get thoroughly drunk on.

Lewis moans into that mouth once it meets his own again. Muffles his pleasure against it as Ron’s hands unbutton his uniform further, desperate as he is to not face awkward questions in the morning, but then gasps aloud when Ron’s hips press into him and he feels just how much he is wanted. A very slow rhythm seeks dominion over him in a way that makes him wrap his legs around the man even more. He presses kisses to Ron’s shoulders, nips at the man’s skin with his teeth, struggles in his attempt to unbutton that uniform which seems so restrictive now.

He’s always known Ron is beautiful. Nothing too striking and even terribly capable of fading into the background, of course, because that is just the way this man is too. Yet, when Ron is switched on and fully engaged in whatever is going on around him? His eyes glitter, his movements slow, and there’s something of an unearthly sense to him that knocks the breath clean out of Lewis’s lungs. He’s never felt the urge to drink more than when they were in the Netherlands and Ron worked intelligence alongside him.

Not until tonight, at least. Tonight, he feels drunk off merely watching Ron.

Ron’s _beautiful_ like this, aglow in the room’s dim light, bare skin betraying muscles and scars that speak of a relentless urge to conquer, and Lewis can’t fucking look away. He wants his hands on the thin lines that trace a web of hurt onto the man’s skin. He wants his mouth on the birthmark just below his navel and much lower still. He longs to leave his own mark on a man so beloved by destruction. He craves to see the man undone of all vestige of control, unraveled beneath him, unmade by touch alone.

He’s a moth drawn to the flame.

Scratch that. He’s faced with a whole forest fire and he wants nothing more than to burn.

He feels the urge to drink now. Feels it when he’s pinned down by Ron’s languid, open stare. Feels it when their shirts finally give way to need and are thrown to the floor unceremoniously. Feels it when Ron’s hands are on him, all over him, and heat rises to his cheeks at how fucking _good_ it feels. His own hands tremble with the urge to hold a glass the way he now wraps his hands around Ron’s wrists to guide his touch further down down _down_ , shake with the need to tip liquid back into his throat until it burns more than Ron’s eyes blaze at the challenge, fumble with the way he’s feeling tonight as though there’s a cure for being kind of happy and sad at the same time.

Lewis doesn’t like the fact that he’s predictable. Supposes it’s a good thing he is, now, though, because the noise he makes when Ron’s fingers slip just beneath his waistband is something altogether unholy. He keens longing into Ron’s mouth unreservedly when the touch turns even more determined. He shudders as the room’s cool air hits his naked skin now that the last remnants of his clothes are removed rather unceremoniously. Almost comes apart then and there, between Ron’s teeth nipping at his lower lip and his fingertips marking new pathways along his hips and Ron’s ragged breath in his mouth and his hand finally – fucking _finally_ – wrapping itself around his cock.

“Hold out for me,” murmurs Ron. Lewis gasps as the man’s next bite turns sharp and a little painful. Gasps even more when that hand slowly tightens around him and sets a pace that is so languid it could spin him out of control entirely. “Don’t fall apart on me yet, Lewis.”

“When am I allowed to?” he challenges, naked and unafraid, hands unbuckling Ron’s belt and ghosting over the man’s body until Ron huffs a soft but satisfied curse in his ear. “Do you decide when?”

“You’re allowed to only after you’re naked beneath me, with my mouth wrapped all around you.” Ron’s voice is so soft in his ear that it wrecks Lewis’s spine with shivers. “I told you I want a taste of you.”

“You’re all fucking talk,” snarls Lewis softly, bucking up against the palm of Ron’s hand, “and I’m sick of it.”

Ron’s next touch burns just like he wants it to. Hurts just like he needs it to. Ron’s grip on him is so firm it makes him hiss, lets him squirm, makes him arch his back involuntarily in a bid to loosen the hold just a little. He bites down hard on his own lip as Ron’s lips trail a destructive pattern down his chest. Bites down until he draws blood, his own destruction still less sharp than Ron’s teeth wreaking havoc all over his skin, his own pain fading under lips and tongue and hands that wrap his mind in that haze of wanting more.

He almost challenges again, because he’s born argumentative and that’s just the way he is, but then Ron’s mouth is _on him_ and he forgets to breathe entirely.

And, really, he should’ve known this would be _torture_.

He should’ve known this would wind up with Ron’s tongue lazily swirling circles around his cock, teasing out patterns upon his skin, flicking careful warning notes against him that make all noise constrict in Lewis’s throat. He should have known this would end up with Ron’s hand wrapped around him, stroking out a rhythm that is too slow and then too fast and then just fucking _right_ in a way that almost makes his vision go white, pacing him in a way that leaves him gasping out for more so fucking shamelessly it makes his cheeks burn. He should’ve known having Ron’s mouth wrapped around him would be akin to slow murder.

He loves every goddamn second of it.

His hands wind into Ron’s hair. He attempts to keep his grip light, but his hips buck against the relentless pace Ron sets the second Lewis’s hands touch his head. He groans when the man holds still again as soon as Lewis thinks he’s found a way to work with that pace. Curses out loud as the man’s tongue turns lazy and teasing once more. Isn’t surprised to find Ron flashing a quick grin up at him, obviously amused by Lewis’s dismay, but when he tightens his hand around Ron’s hair again he is surprised to hear a soft moan of pleasure being exhaled against his skin.

Lewis’s touch turns experimental right as Ron’s turns determined. He spirals beneath the man’s ministrations to the point where his hand clenches in Ron’s hair and Ron’s own hums of pleasure thrill all around him. His body vibrates with longing, so fierce and harsh that it shivers through his skin and stabs him in all the places where he is most empty. He trembles with the shock of it, of being touched and seen and _wanted_ , of being alive alive alive..

His vision grows hazy around the edges. Heat, impossible stinging heat, unwraps from the chasm deep inside him and rises rises _rises_.. His cheeks flush, his breath shakes, his voice gives out between a cry and a gasp, he moves closer and closer and closer to Ron until Ron is all he feels, all his world is made of, all that fucking well _matters_.

And oh, oh, _oh_ , it is better than any other rush.

Lewis _soars_.

His world tilts, shifts, goes utterly fucking _white_.

Ron’s hands, gentle on his hips, are his only anchor when his world comes rushing back in at full force and color. The press of his lips just below his navel sends another tremor through Lewis. Brings everything else crashing down and in, too.

Suddenly, his eyes are wet and his chest constricts with a breath he knows he’s been holding his whole life. It hitches in his throat soon after. Spills out into that space between them that suddenly feels altogether precarious, as if reality itself reconsiders its options and lands nowhere good. He shudders the breath out as Ron’s hands tighten their grip on him a moment and the man pushes himself up and lands beside Lewis.

“Hey, hey.” Ron murmurs out soft assurance as Lewis fixes his gaze on the ceiling and tries not to cry. “Lew–”

“I almost died,” he whispers. _I almost died and you’re the only one who_ _makes me feel like I’m still breathing_ _._ He exhales a breath. Hates how clear his pain feels now. Knives to his chest, blades in his heart, razors messing with his lungs. “I.. Fuck. Sorry.”

“Don’t.” Ron’s voice is sharp. Laced through with the weight of command. “It’s like this sometimes, Lewis. And that’s okay.”

“Is it like that for you?”

Ron’s eyes glitter in the light as Lewis turns to look at him. There’s vulnerability in the set of his mouth, in the way he meets Lewis’s gaze but then looks through and beyond him, in the softening of his touch that makes Lewis wish for something unspeakable.

“Every day,” he confesses, then, and his voice is small in the space between them. “Every goddamn day.”

Lewis contemplates what he’s about to do for almost half a second, which is a longer stretch of thought than all his previous bad decisions combined ever received.

He kisses Ron anew. Gentle, this time, and far softer than he ever dared be around this man before. Kisses him the way he thinks he needs to be, with no pressure and no strings attached, and slides closer to him when Ron’s response is a contented sigh against his lips. And oh, how he yearns for this. For this feeling that blossoms deep in his belly, for the longing that’s in this touch, for the closeness that is their arms wrapping around one another and their legs tangling upon these sheets.

“Need you.” He sighs his desire out between kisses. “Want you.”

“You’ve just had me.”

“Mmm, no.” He pushes and nudges Ron until the man groans and rolls onto his back. “Not like this, I haven’t. It’s my turn.”

“You don’t have to.”

“And if I want to?” he challenges immediately, shooting the question back quicker than any gunfire ever would be. “If I want you like this?” He questions it, smirk at play around his mouth, one hand already traveling down over his body, and raises an eyebrow in challenge. “Are you really gonna stop me, _sir_?”

Ron’s eyes blaze. His face is the picture of fierce deliberation. “I could kick you off the bed for calling me that right now,” he contemplates out loud, glaring up at Lewis, “and I will if you do it again.”

“Off the bed, sure.. but off of you?” Lewis challenges boldly, confident now that he feels Ron’s need for him grow beneath the wandering path of his fingers as he shifts to move atop him. “I don’t think you want to do that.”

“And why wouldn’t I?”

Lewis smirks in earnest now. Leans forward until his lips brush Ron’s ear. “Because then you won’t know what it’s like to have my hand around you like this,” he murmurs, tightening his grip on Ron until he hears his breath go ragged, “and have my mouth wrap all around you so I can swallow you down. You won’t know what it’s like to have me suck you off like that.” He hums as Ron’s breath audibly hitches. “And you wanna know what it’s like, hm?”

“You’re all fucking talk,” smiles Ron, deliberately challenging him by using Lewis’s own words against him, “and I’m sick of it. Have you even done this before?”

“Oh ye of little faith,” grins Lewis now, hands deftly trailing a deliberate path on Ron’s skin that the man’s body mercifully responds to, “I did attend Yale, you know.”

“Oh you poor little rich boy,” smirks Ron, sounding vastly amused even when his next breath is too hoarse to be natural. There’s a teasing lilt to his tone that says he doesn’t mean his words to wound this time. His eyes follow Lewis’s every move. “You’re making real good on that higher education here, Lewis.”

Lewis contemplates the curves and dips of Ron’s body beneath him. Catalogs the harder lines – wound so tight, coiled around a fight – and runs his fingertips over the ones that strain beneath his touch the most. He presses down gently, experimentally, and far too softly. It earns him a curse, a glare, and a hip tilt that feels entirely too deliberate. Ron’s hands wrap around his and clamp down harshly once Lewis’s touch goes entirely feather-light against the man’s skin.

“Relax,” mutters Lewis, knowing full well he’s asking this man for something impossible. “Can’t make good on that higher education,” he mocks, mirroring Ron’s words almost exactly, “when you’re fighting me at every damn turn. Would you just lie back and let me, already?”

“I won’t break under –”

Lewis meets the snarled challenge halfway. Captures the protest with his lips, licks and nips his way into that defiant mouth, smirks as their shared breath goes ragged and Ron’s body seems to uncoil beneath him. It’s delightful to learn that a mere press of lips beneath the man’s ear makes the fight drain from his limbs, with no more than a soft sigh and gasp for company, and that traveling a path of kisses down the man’s throat leads to delicious tugs on his hair.

He trails further down still. Catalogs the soft moans and gasps that escape as Ron’s body surrenders to his touch. Every sound he draws from Ron’s lips makes him feel strangely proud. _This is for me alone,_ he thinks as undiluted want spills forth from a voice so used to dealing out commands, _this is what I can do to a man like this one._ Something fierce blazes to life inside of him at the thought. He smirks as he teases a path down Ron’s belly and undresses the man at the same time.

Hips buck up to meet him as his hand finally grasps Ron’s cock without there being a barrier of fabric in the way. He laughs as he tightens his grip enough to watch Ron’s head tilt back with a wordless cry. There’s something wild in how his hands futilely grasp the sheets beneath them as Lewis presses open-mouthed kisses to his skin. He hears Ron unravel with a curse and gasp when he finally, finally wraps his mouth and tongue around the man’s cock.

Lewis’s hands turn steady as he drinks Ron in. He hums experimentally as he moves beyond the tip and is rewarded with a sound somewhere between a snarl and a fierce hiss. He takes Ron into his mouth as though he’s the most expensive liquor Lewis will ever savor. And _fuck_ , it feels good. It feels fucking _better_ than good when Ron’s hand comes to rest in his hair and yet does not set him any kind of pace to adhere to.

_God, you wound me,_ he almost says when their eyes lock and he sees Ron yield to him.   
  
"This okay?" he whispers instead.  
  
"Lewis," Ron groans, command touched by steel and a sliver of barbwire, "get your fucking mouth back on me right now."

He laughs, then, because he’s always been bad at following orders and yet he isn’t even contemplating how to duck and avoid this one. He licks teasing strips of longing up Ron’s cock as he tightens the grip of his hand. Laughs once more just before he wraps his mouth around him again and sets a rhythm that he knows to be just right.

Satisfaction tingles and races through him as Ron’s hips finally buck up against his touch, as Ron’s hand tightens around his hair and finally begins to set a pace for Lewis’s head to follow, as Ron fucks up into his mouth with a wicked sort of abandon that makes Lewis hum with pleasure and sends a shock of glee rushing through him.

He’d do anything in the world as long as it meant hearing Ron lose control like this, feeling him unravel more with every slight motion, knowing that he is causing Ron to come utterly undone beneath him. Ron’s movements become shorter, haphazard even, as Lewis coaxes him deeper into his mouth and digs his free hand so deeply into Ron’s hip that he’s sure to leave a bruise.

There’s nothing gentle about this.

Lewis swallows him down, leaves marks on his skin, and lays claim to Ron. Knows he should be surprised that Ron lets him, allows him, moves in him, but all it does is feel right. He’s never been more sure of anyone’s presence as he is of Ron’s.

He groans as Ron’s grip on him turns painful and his thrusts up into Lewis’s mouth turn wholly erratic. He locks eyes with him right as Ron vainly attempts to warn him, and then sucks his cock as deep into his mouth as he can. And oh, _yes_ , he’s rewarded for it when Ron’s warmth spills into his mouth and slides down his throat better than any damn drink ever could. He’s drunk off this sensation and delighted when some of it trickles out the corner of his mouth before he has a chance to swallow it all. Lewis is giddy with the knowledge that he’s the cause for Ron shuddering and going utterly still beneath him like this. He licks the proof of the man’s undoing off his fingers and hums with pleasure just the once.

Lewis’s cheeks burn when Ron’s eyes finally meet his own again. There’s a bit of a haze to them instead of their usual feverish intensity, but there’s no masking the brewing swirl of feelings in them that could be either very bad or very good. He breaks eye contact as soon as he feels steady enough to. As soon as the haze of ecstasy that claimed him fades and leaves him feeling slightly skittish and more than a little hungover.

“Not what you expected tonight, huh?” He keeps his voice light. Lets his eyes wander around the room. His cheeks heat up even more at the thought of going back to normal after this. “Probably not even what you wanted, signing up to go to war.”

“Expected?” Ron hums thoughtfully. His voice is slightly hoarse. “No. Doesn’t mean it isn’t welcome. Doesn’t mean it’s not wanted.”

He does look at Ron, then, because there’s a certainty within the man’s words that he envies. As if this is just another day and there’s nothing wrong with anything they have done or will do. Ron’s slight smile is genuine. His voice is light, too, but gravity anchors it in all the spaces Lewis never allows himself to fill.

“There’s no shame in wanting, Lew.”

_Lew_. The name is a caress that tumbles forth from Ron’s lips. The name’s free of judgment for the first time, as though he has been elevated from the gutter and not made to crawl back into his own abyss after. The name is not spoken in amusement, or derision, or exasperation. _Lew_. It’s the first time the name doesn’t sting. It’s the first time it’s spoken by someone who doesn’t wish or cause him some form of harm.

His name is safe in Ron’s mouth.

He wants to weep when it sweeps away the dark within him.

Ron watches him like a hawk. Lewis thinks the Airborne is really fucking stupid for looking at this man and assuming he could be anything other than an intelligence officer. He’s the only one who sees Lewis and doesn’t seem to mind his being there. There’s a weight to his presence that strikes all the chords inside Lewis that used to be so jumbled up, as though somehow he figured out how to make music with this tangled mess.

A song lights in him, rises to tug at all the notes and half-thoughts inside of him, warms his belly and his chest with the kindling of a flame he sees reflected in Ron’s eyes.

“I could go,” Ron says.

There is something else in his voice. A whole story that Lewis thinks he’s only ever managed to read the first page of lurks behind his eyes.

“You could,” Lewis agrees. Laces his next words, foreign and familiar at once, with a story of his own. Hedges his bets on the impossible. “Si tu veux.”

“Je ne veux pas.”

The response is immediate. Lewis wants to laugh. _Of course_ he has managed to drag the one officer into his bed who knows Lewis’s oddities in every language, who responds in kind to all the things Lewis does not know how to say, who watches him and sees all the things inside of Lewis that make him so very hard to kill. Of course it’s _Ron_ , who’s never been afraid of anything and lives life as if he has stolen time itself out of death’s clutches.

He lies down beside Ron. Doesn’t touch him, not yet, not when the man’s eyes are so bright and burning still. He looks on as Ron loosens the band of his watch. In the world they live in, in which everything is timed and kept in order like this, it’s the greatest sacrifice to set time itself aside in favor of something else.

Ron turns away from him. Brushes the glass shards off the bedside table, as if there is no longer need to keep Lewis’s testament to pain out in the open that way. Sets his watch upon it instead, as if to say he will pick it up in the morning.

Everything will be different in the bright light of day.

Lewis has no idea what the hell he’s doing. He just knows he wants to do it. Needs to. He slips an arm over Ron's waist and burrows close against the man's back. Presses his head to the dip between Ron's shoulder blades as Ron stiffens under the touch. Lewis exhales softly, lets his breath become a ghost on skin, and nudges him with his nose just the once as if to inhale that scent of gunpowder and soap more deeply. He does not move. Just stays there, with Ron's breath audibly hitching at the contact and Ron's hand curled lightly around his own, and closes his eyes.

  
  
Ron's muscles uncoil beneath the touch. The firmness marked by hesitation and perhaps even fear seems to dissipate with every exhale Lewis breathes against him. The tight line of his shoulders softens to the point where Lewis think he can make out every breath and every heartbeat. The deep sigh, once exhaled, is marked by Ron's fingers threading through Lewis's own so gently that Lewis almost thinks he is already dreaming.

  
  
He falls asleep like this, pressed against Ron as if he is capable of being a shield against the war that ravaged and almost undid the man. He drifts off like this, as if he is allowed to want Ron. Lewis is not one for prayer, or so he thinks, and his one thought before slumber overtakes him is more threat than plea.

_Don’t take this from me at sunrise._


End file.
